Problem installing vcftools

Question

[saltinimatteo98]

I'm trying to install vcftools but when I try the command

autoconf configure.ac

it gives this output

configure.ac:12: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE

so i tried running just

./configure.ac

it it gives this error

./configure.ac: line 4: syntax error near unexpected token `[2.63]'
./configure.ac: line 4: `AC_PREREQ([2.63])'

Any help in understanding what I should do would be greatly appreaciated

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

you should just download the release, and compile with configure+make:

./configure
make
make install

[saltinimatteo98]

I downloaded the release but when I run the command

tar xvf vcftools-0.1.15.tar.gz

it says

tar: Error opening archive: Failed to open 'vcftools-0.1.15.tar.gz'

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

tar xvfz vcftools-0.1.15.tar.gz

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

anyway tar xvf works on my machine:

$ wget -O "vcftools-0.1.15.tar.gz"  https://github.com/vcftools/vcftools/releases/download/v0.1.15/vcftools-0.1.15.tar.gz && tar xvf vcftools-0.1.15.tar.gz
(...)
./vcftools-0.1.15/._LICENSE
./vcftools-0.1.15/LICENSE
./vcftools-0.1.15/._Makefile.am
./vcftools-0.1.15/Makefile.am
./vcftools-0.1.15/Makefile.in
./vcftools-0.1.15/._README.md
./vcftools-0.1.15/README.md
./vcftools-0.1.15/aclocal.m4
./vcftools-0.1.15/._autogen.sh
./vcftools-0.1.15/autogen.sh
./vcftools-0.1.15/autom4te.cache/
./vcftools-0.1.15/autom4te.cache/output.0
./vcftools-0.1.15/autom4te.cache/output.1
./vcftools-0.1.15/autom4te.cache/requests
./vcftools-0.1.15/autom4te.cache/traces.0
./vcftools-0.1.15/autom4te.cache/traces.1
./vcftools-0.1.15/._build-aux
./vcftools-0.1.15/build-aux/
./vcftools-0.1.15/build-aux/._git-version-gen
./vcftools-0.1.15/build-aux/git-version-gen
(...)

[saltinimatteo98]

I downloaded the release but when I run

./configure

it prints this

-bash: ./configure: No such file or directory

and when I try

./configure.ac

it prints this

./configure.ac: line 4: syntax error near unexpected token `[2.63]'
./configure.ac: line 4: `AC_PREREQ([2.63])'

[GenoMax]

Looks like you need to install autoconf. See this.

[saltinimatteo98]

I already installed autoconf'

[Michael]

autoconf is rarely enough, you need to install automake as well, these are combined in packages named 'autotools' in some distributions. You cannot run configure.ac, you either need to generate a configure script or get a package which includes it, like a release tar-ball. The autogen.sh way is only for building the git directly, according to the documentation the tar.gz should include the configure script.